Not so. With all due respect to John Hanson, Barack Hussein Obama will soon become America's 44th President simply because he was demonstrably the better candidate by far and thus more deserving of the office. Like much of America, and indeed, much of the world, African-American voters perceived this and voted accordingly. The fact that Obama's heart pumps African-American blood is simply immaterial.
This issue requires addressing because of pre- and post-election rationalizing by bewildered elements within the vanquished party currently in full face-saving/ass-covering mode. For many of these folks, Arizona Sen. John McCain's loss was simply the product of a charismatic lightning rod of identity politics converging with a disastrously-timed economic collapse. This rational eludes the fact that they supported an almost tragically ill-suited candidate who ran an astonishingly inept campaign against a smart, well-organized Democrat. It's fairly simple. Barack Obama fashioned and implemented a brilliant and ultimately successful election strategy against a party noteworthy for an uncanny ability to continuously "win" elections in spite of its inability to properly govern once their victories are attained.
In pointing this out, I'm not overlooking a longstanding political premise which holds that typically, the party in power during hard times undergoes political backlash divulged through protest votes against its candidates at the first available opportunity. Thus, there's no question that a large percentage of white voter support for Democrat Obama was steadfastly entrenched in a "throw the (Republican) bums out" school of thought obviously rooted in the economic collapse.
Also not being ignored is the obvious fact that for many African-American voters, a fair amount of Barack's political appeal rests upon an almost alarming reservoir of personal charisma that with this historic achievement, propels him toward a sainted realm occupied by the likes of Nelson Mandela and Martin Luther King, Jr. Yet, for African-Americans, this was no protest vote against the Republican, white or any other establishment per se. Certainly not in the way that past black electoral support for the Reverends Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton or even Shirley Chisholm may arguably have been construed. Ditto for Carol Moseley Braun; Lenora Fulani; and to a far lesser extent, Alan Keyes.
Indeed, the endeavor of near-universal African-American support for Obama extends far beyond just personal charisma. It is solidly well-founded and upheld by a sustained flow of irrefutable evidence -- the stately manner by which he represented the U.S. during excursions abroad or his composed debate performances, for example-- which confirmed that this candidate was thoroughly up for the job in ways that are also thoroughly obvious.
African-Americans -- as was unquestionably the case with the tens of millions of his white supporters, including many influential Republicans -- saw Barack's mettle proven through his conclusive intelligence, astute organizational skills, and a serenely confident and comfortably knowledgeable display of presidential temperament and awareness. He demonstrated not only the intellectual capacity to appropriately conceptualize the presidency, but also an ability to easily convey that understanding to the electorate, both black and white.
By contrast, the baffling incoherency of McCain's campaign channeled images of former Kansas Senator Bob Dole's hapless Oval Office challenge: distracted, unsteady, unscripted, unsure, erratic, bumbling, clueless, unglued and senselessly inept.
This bold dissimilarity between the candidates and their campaigns is what renders so tremendously outlandish, an assertion that the practice of identity politics by African-Americans voters was a major factor in Obama's victory. Some McCain supporters (and even some perhaps bitterly misguided Democrats) have implied that blacks played the "race card" and that it trumped qualifications and experience as the sole rationale for Obama's African-American support.
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